So I dropped my radiator ducts while I had the nose off the car and I found golf ball sized chunks of rubber in there... Dirt, leaves, dead bugs, large amounts of trash...

So today I installed some wire hexoganal mesh behind the grills. It's aluminum, and shouldn't stick out much... It's held in with about 8 million tiny zip ties, so it'll be easy to drop and replace when the time comes... I'll take some pics after I get the car back together this weekend. Parts are sheduled to arrive tomorrow and I hope to have the radiator back on and the system topped and "burped" and then get the inner fenderwells and ducting reinstalled, and then the bumper cover back on!

Mike

 

Zip ties? Sounds like one solution. I'd really like to find some custom grill mesh for my TT, but I want it to look really good and can't find anyone w/ a really nice kit.

 

Woudn't it be great if mesh grills could be designed so that they pop in or out of the bumper w/ spring pins so that you could get directly into the radiators without hindrence and vaccuum all the crap out easily? THAT would be perfect.

I bet we could sell 50 sets as an initial group buy around here.

 

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...le-screen.html

 

My wife looked at the grills tonight and she's pretty criticle. She couldn't see the black zip ties on black grill slats until I pointed them out...

I'll take pics when I'm done and the front end is reinstalled...

Mike

 

Hok, Thanks, I'm following that thread.

 

That would be great. I'm looking forward to them.

 

I pulled a dead bird out of mine at the track.

 

Looking forward to the pics! I think I'd rather see a few zip ties, as opposed to a dead bird! TT Surgeon, that sucks! I hate checking mine, but luckily no road kill....yet! (Knock on wood)

 

I'm going to have to go back and take a look, now that I have pics of how they did it. I tried to get the grill mesh to fit in overtop of the OEM grill slats, and snap back into the bumper cover, but it wasn't working. To much material thickness, I guess... I'll play around with it...Although what I have looks pretty damned good.

Mike

 

So I contacted the speed shop I use for serious work, Dougherty's (think Seschgang's mechanic....top notch and very much "the" place to go for a bunch of the RTR instructors...).

$875 to install stainless mesh. Granted, it is woven, top of the line, stuff, but that is a lot of dollars for mesh IMHO. The labor is the issue.....105/hr at their shop (some of their mechanics are Rolex/LeMans/etc. level....so to me well worth it...anyway....I had this idea:


Get top of the line mesh, cut to fit and put a rim of some sort of ruber edge material on it.

Zip tie it to the OEM plastic from the front (take a look at this month's excellence, there is a 930 turbo DD in the back that has a loose mesh in front.....looks find to me to be honest).

Drive and enjoy the 600 dollars or more still in the pocket.


Source of the mesh would be: customcargrills.com

I figure I could under cut just a tiny bit to avoid scraping the paint....say 1cm or less all the way around.

Do the OEM grill slats snap in and out of the bumper while it is still on the car? That would be a wonderful thing.....



Jeff

 

Actually I ordered my Aluminum Mesh from McMaster-Carr for $50 shipped and I still have a lot left over to experiment with... I figure I'm out maybe 2 hours and $60 in zipties/mesh.

Mike

 

heres mine...........

 

Please excuse the dirty nose... Car went from the incident on track, into the trailer, onto the lift... Hasn't been cleaned up yet...





Some of the damage...

Lower Radiator Bracket...


Radiator...


Broken Inner fender liner...


Broken lower center scoop...


All the paint knocked off the splitter on impact and after being run over by other cars...
[img]http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...ensplitter.jpg[/img]

Mike

 

For those wondering, there are 15 zip ties per side mesh and 13 on the center.

Mike